# "Going to Hell in a handbasket"
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 25, 1999, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490 "1999-09-25T20:00:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/1 "1999-09-25T20:00:00Z")
Per subject phrase:
1. What does it mean? What instances would it be used?
2. What are its origins? An early cite?
3. The SDMB search engine is screwed and I just get gobble-dee-gook searching the web.
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### Author:  [@aseymayo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aseymayo)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/2 "1999-09-25T21:39:00Z")
Chief - what I’ve found so far: [http://members.aol.com/MorelandC/HaveOrigins.htm](http://members.aol.com/MorelandC/HaveOrigins.htm)
Are the other places we can go in a handbasket?
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### Author:  [@aseymayo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aseymayo)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/3 "1999-09-25T21:42:00Z")
Sorry, thought the link would take you to the appropriate page. It’s under “rhymes and slang” on the index at the left.
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### Author:  [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/4 "1999-09-25T22:20:00Z")
ET?
“Phoooone hooome…!”
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### Author:  [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/5 "1999-09-25T22:48:00Z")
That’s an interesing site, asey, thanks for finding it. However, I’d be cautious about it.
In terms of “hunky dory”, for instance, they cite the oft-repeated idea that it arose from the name of a street in Japan; however, the phrase was used in pre-Civil War songs in the U.S., and so the Japan-origin seems extremely unlikely.
For “hell in a handbasket,” Straight Dope Science Advisory Board have been trying to get to the bottom of that one for a while, with not much success. The reference on the site that asey gives just says it’s alliterative. Well, yeah… so?
We’d be glad if anyone has any substantiated explanations of the origin of the phrase.
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### Author:  [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/6 "1999-09-25T23:15:00Z")
Thanks CK,
I hesitated to come back and say that some of the explainations on that page were bullshit. I’ll continue to dig.
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### Author:  [@aseymayo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aseymayo)
#### Post date: [September 25, 1999, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/7 "1999-09-25T23:40:00Z")
Yeah, you guys are right - I was just happy to find _something_ on it. I’ll keep looking.
No time to lose, no time to lose, no time Toulouse.
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### Author:  [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/8 "1999-09-26T04:14:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Are the other places we can go in a handbasket?
Only if we pull ourselves up with our own handbaskets.
Ray
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### Author:  [@jazzmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jazzmine)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/9 "1999-09-26T04:38:00Z")
Here are a couple of things:
[http://www.greenapple.com/~words1/back-e2.html](http://www.greenapple.com/~words1/back-e2.html)
[http://www.wilton.net/wordorh.htm](http://www.wilton.net/wordorh.htm)
Also [http://www.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/alt-usage-english-faq](http://www.jmas.co.jp/FAQs/alt-usage-english-faq) had this to say:
“James L. Rader of Merriam-Webster Editorial Dept. writes: ‘The Dictionary of American Regional English […] records ‘to go to heaven in a handbasket’ much earlier than […] ‘hell,’ which is not attested before the 1950s. The earliest cite in our files is from 1949 […]. ‘In a handbasket’ seems to imply ease and and speed […]. Perhaps part of the success of these phrases must simply be ascribed to the force of alliteration. DARE has a much earlier citation for another alliterative collocation with ‘handbasket’
(1714), from Samuel Sewall’s diary: ‘A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it.’ I suspect that ‘to go to hell in a handbasket’ has been around much longer than our records would seem to indicate.’”
trisha
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### Author:  [@aseymayo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aseymayo)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 6:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/10 "1999-09-26T06:06:00Z")
Here’s a WAG - from the above post, the phrase “his head in a Handbasket” made me think of an execution. Decapitation was pretty popular at one time and I suppose there was a basket to catch the unfortunate victim’s head. Perhaps going to heaven/hell in a handbasket was a euphemism for dying on the chopping block?
Here comes a candle to light you to bed.
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
(Had to throw in a nursery rhyme for Ray; I know how much he likes them.)
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### Author:  [@Satan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satan)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 10:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/11 "1999-09-26T10:24:00Z")
aseymayo: Wouldn’t that be a “headbasket”?
What the hell IS a handbasket anyway?
* * *
Yer pal,
Satan
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### Author:  [@Nickrz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nickrz)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/12 "1999-09-26T13:18:00Z")
I used to write three “word association” brainteasers. One of them was “Troy, capitol, handbasket.”
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### Author:  [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)
#### Post date: [September 26, 1999, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/13 "1999-09-26T16:45:00Z")
Helena… I get it.
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### Author:  [@NanoByte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NanoByte)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/14 "1999-09-27T06:56:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
No wonder the violence in the schools, with aseymayo writing nursery rhymes like that. But without a Jack in it somewhere it’ll never sell. The following are already taken:
The beanstock-climbing Jack
The Jack who broke his crown
Horner
Spratt
The house-building Jack
Try a car-Jack-er.
A handbasket is what you carry around when you expect to meet a lot of those people who say, “Hey, I could use a hand here.” You just reach in your basket and throw them one. (You can probably stock up on hands in one of the Moslem countries that has a fair supply of unskilled thieves.)
Ray (and eye for an eye, a basket for a hand)
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### Author:  [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/15 "1999-09-27T13:50:00Z")
Are those the hands that have to be washed before cooking?
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### Author:  [@ChiefScott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChiefScott)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/16 "1999-09-27T14:22:00Z")
The way I understand it, a handbasket was used by young maidens on the prowl for husbands in the Shaker society.
Made from thin strips of wood, usually pine, and often covered with two hinged lids, these baskets were highly decorated (by Shaker standards) by the young women who’d carry it. Because there was no utilitarian purpose for these psuedo-handbags, often they went identified by antiques dealers as egg baskets, small picnic baskets and the like.
As a tool to identify a young woman ready for courting, and the ornamentation allowed by a strict society, there are sexual undertones ascribed to handbaskets.
Gives a new understanding to the wolf chasing after Little Red Riding Hood, Don’t it?
Here’s another WAG which occurred to me as I was looking into these baskets. “Going to Hell in a handbasket” may have originally been ascribed a perceived meaning of “looseness” to a young woman.
But maybe I’ve just been at sea too long.
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### Author:  [@beefymeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beefymeg)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/17 "1999-09-27T16:42:00Z")
I had no idea my sig line was so fascinating. Cool!
* * *
Where are we going?
And why am I in this handbasket?
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/18 "1999-09-27T16:56:00Z")
Harry Turtledove wrote an alternate history novel in which he had Teddy Roosevelt living on his Montana ranch (that much is true history) and using a wagon to get to the nearest city, Helena; he named the wagon “the Handbasket.”
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### Author:  [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/19 "1999-09-27T16:56:00Z")
Harry Turtledove wrote an alternate history novel in which he had Teddy Roosevelt living on his Montana ranch (that much is true history) and using a wagon to get to the nearest city, Helena; he named the wagon “the Handbasket.”
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### Author:  [@aseymayo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aseymayo)
#### Post date: [September 27, 1999, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket/3490/20 "1999-09-27T18:20:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> The way I understand it, a handbasket was used by young maidens on the prowl for husbands in the Shaker society.
The only problem here is that the Shakers were celibate and did not promote marriage.
Some selected quotes from a web page about the Shaker view:
‘The Church professed to live a virgin life; and those in it who “waxed wanton against Christ,” and married, had “damnation, because they had cast off their first faith” of celibacy’
‘All who “marry and are given in marriage,” or who support that order, the Shakers term “the children of this world;” thus, on this ground, throwing heathens, Turks, Catholics, Protestants, infidels, etc. , all into one general class, or company’
‘It is the earthly, fleshly, relation that must be hated by all who would become followers of Jesus - Christians-“children of the resurrection,” of whom Jesus said, " They neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels of God in heaven"’
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